Richmond Tag

Draper Aden Associates has provided site planning and engineering services to the Virginia Commonwealth University Children’s Hospital of Richmond Pavilion. The 640,000 SF outpatient facility is located on Broad Street in downtown Richmond between 10th and 11th Streets. It is adjacent to the current Children’s Pavilion. The services provided for this project include: site demolition plans, removal of portions of the existing Children’s pavilion, temporary building access and utility services. This new construction includes a 600-car parking garage with four-levels below grade and three above ground, extensive streetscapes and coordination with utilities and vehicular access, and underground connection to other services and utilities in the Medical College of Virginia Campus via a tunnel under 11th Street.
We have a long history working with public and private institutional clients such as: K-12 school systems, higher education institutions, state agencies, museums, cultural facilities, and healthcare. DAA has also provided site planning and engineering...

The East End Theater redevelopment project continues to get noticed! As we’ve mentioned previously on the blog, DAA Virtual Construction took on the renovation of the East End Theater in Richmond’s historical Church Hill neighborhood in 2015. The project utilized cutting-edge scanning and BIM technology and incorporated a number of innovative engineering techniques. Our work was recognized by ACEC Virginia with this year’s Pinnacle Award for the state’s top engineering project!
The good news keeps coming as Virginia Business recently profiled the East End Theater redevelopment. The magazine noted that DAA faced a number of challenges on the theater renovation, including designing the second and third floors to be self-supporting, adding new foundational support to the building and incorporating an addition that would connect to the original theater, all while retaining the theatre’s original shell and character.
Read the full story from Virginia Business, including insights from the developer and DAA’s Les...

The holidays are here and so is award season. We’re pleased to announce we are the winners of an ACEC Virginia 2016 Grand Award and in the running for the national prize!
This past year, DAA Virtual Construction took on the renovation of the East End Theater in Richmond’s historical Church Hill neighborhood. The starting condition of the theater was extremely dilapidated, including a missing roof and plants growing throughout. With no documentation on the building, this was the perfect candidate to use scanning and BIM technology provided in-house by DAA.
The project has also been recognized by ULI (Urban Land Institute) of Virginia, who gave it their 2015 Vision Award for Best Renovation or Adaptive Reuse.
We’re extremely proud of the finished project and to be recognized for its success. We expect our leg lamp in the mail any day now.
Read the more at acecva.org...

Here is a great story about how private corporations and non-profits work together. The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation’s Chesapeake Bay Stewardship Program's funding comes from private companies including Altria, Shell, CSX, Walmart and FedEx as well as federal agencies including the Environmental Protection Agency, the Natural Resources Conservation Service and the U.S. Forest Service.
In Richmond the Chesapeake Bay Stewardship Fund monies will fund an improvement project that not only provides educational outreach to the Church Hill area of Richmond ,but will also provide healthy food options for neighborhood families and a cleaner Chesapeake Bay.
It is a win-win-win.
Watch covereage of the grant award and learn more about the project from WTVR News Channel 6
http://wtvr.com/2013/11/21/national-fish-and-wildlife-foundation-church-hill/
Read more about the Church Hill Activities and Tutoring program on their web site at:
http://chpn.net/news/2013/11/06/chat-gets-funding-for-east-end-edible-rain-garden-project_29962/...

This Richmond.com article is an important reminder that when all of us do something small, it adds up to something big. I live in Richmond's Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) area. One small thing I have done is to disconnect our downspouts from the sewer system. Before, the rain ran directly into the sanitary sewer every time it rained. Now (see photo), the the water from our downspout soaks into the ground and helps the flowers in our front yard make it through our long hot summer.
http://www.richmond.com/city-life/article_62f414ba-96dc-11e2-8f64-0019bb30f31a.html
[caption id="attachment_1079" align="alignleft" width="620"] Rainfall from the Telfer rooftop has been redirected to provide irrigation for a flower garden in the front yard (Look for blooming photos later in the spring.)[/caption]...

Stormwater utility fees may be more challenging for localities to collect without a mechanism for enforcement - especially in those cases where the stormwater utility fee is issued as a separate bill. The City of Richmond’s utility fee structure has been in place for over 3 years. For the most recent fiscal year which ended in June, the City collected only 64 percent of what it billed, which is about one quarter less than the collection rate of nearly 85 percent during the utility’s first year. Therefore, the stormwater program funded by the fee is currently at a deficit of $6.8 million from projections.
More about the City's amnesty program as well as how the City has dealt and plans to deal with property transfers and rented/leased properties can be found in the Richmond Times-Dispatch article below.
http://www.timesdispatch.com/news/local/city-of-richmond/city-stormwater-utility-customers-offered-amnesty/article_12d4ef9d-090c-52e3-927e-b47c5d0612b2.html...

First order of business for today: Vote. Voting is our collective civic duty and responsibility.
[caption id="attachment_924" align="alignleft" width="300"] Chimborazo Elementary School Rain Garden[/caption]
Bacon's Rebellion is a one of Virginia's leading politically non-aligned portal for news, opinions and analysis about state, regional and local public policy, so some might find it surprising that over the weekend - just days before a national election in which Virginia could play a critical role in who occupies the White House - readers would learn more about a small rain garden installed by the City of Richmond earlier this summer at Chimborazo Elementary School. Truth is, the City of Richmond has probably been receiving more negative publicity for it stormwater program as of late than it has for the improvements that the program was created to fund. Recent articles in the Richmond Times-Dispatch and other media have stated that collections for the City's stormwater utility fee have been poor...

[caption id="attachment_206" align="alignleft" width="200" caption="Rainwater collection system at Northside Family Learning Center, Richmond, VA"][/caption]
Cisterns make sense, why not use stormwater as resource and reduce the demand on potable water supply systems. I have successfully designed cistern systems, I encourage the use of cisterns, and I look forward to the standardized methodology to calculate benefits in the proposed regulations http://www.vwrrc.vt.edu/swc/NonProprietaryBMPs.html . However, I feel that there are some misconceptions about cisterns that need to be addressed:
If the cistern is used only for irrigation, then the cistern does nothing for reducing stormwater impacts in the 6 or 7 months out of the year when there is no irrigation. Cisterns used solely for irrigation need to overflow to another measure, such as bioretention. Is there a stormwater benefit for a measure that works for only half of the year
Rainfall is unpredictable. In the last ten years in Richmond, the annual rainfall varied by...